Such was the form which the plague assumed in the fourteenth
century, for the accompanying chest affection which appeared in
all the countries whereof we have received any account, cannot, on
a comparison with similar and familiar symptoms, be considered as
any other than the inflammation of the lungs of modern medicine, a
disease which at present only appears sporadically, and, owing to
a putrid decomposition of the fluids, is probably combined with
hemorrhages from the vessels of the lungs. Now, as every
carbuncle, whether it be cutaneous or internal, generates in
abundance the matter of contagion which has given rise to it, so,
therefore, must the breath of the affected have been poisonous in
this plague, and on this account its power of contagion
wonderfully increased; wherefore the opinion appears
incontrovertible, that owing to the accumulated numbers of the
diseased, not only individual chambers and houses, but whole
cities were infected, which, moreover, in the Middle Ages, were,
with few exceptions, narrowly built, kept in a filthy state, and
surrounded with stagnant ditches. Flight was, in consequence, of
no avail to the timid; for even though they had sedulously avoided
all communication with the diseased and the suspected, yet their
clothes were saturated with the pestiferous atmosphere, and every
inspiration imparted to them the seeds of the destructive malady,
which, in the greater number of cases, germinated with but too
much fertility.
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